Why you should learn Next.JS

Next.JS is a javascript framework that allows developers to create server-rendered react web apps also comes with other perks that make frontend development swift.

How I encountered Next.JS?

I am currently reworking on my own personal blog with React and Next.JS on the frontend and Express powering the backend.

So why am I redoing my blog from scratch? Before I could launch an MVP of the blog, I had to work on the SEO and also make it easier for web crawlers, which in turn helps with a great search engine score and indexing. I had two options:

Write my own express server to serve my React app

Use libraries like prerender and react-snap

So I tried them all and the journey was not that fine:

When creating my own express server, I suffered from a Babel and webpack version inconsistency problem. This took me like forever, I was deleting the yarn.lock file and also the node_modules over and over, I also tried the npm suggestions but nothing.

When working with prerender and react-snap, it worked perfectly locally on my laptop but kept on failing my Netlify build.

After all the hard work and almost a months time wasted on SSR, I kinda gave up and just launched my blog. On a particular day, I was listening to the Full Stack Radio Episode 99 where he was interviewing Tim Neutkens about next, I took note of four words about next,
...server rendered client applications.... I quickly opened a new tab, visited next website, that was my eureka moment.

Advantages of using Next

Server Side Rendering out of the box
Next handles SSR in such an easy way. Install, run your app, open your browser, you got SSR. Some advantages of SSR are rich link previews.

Static Exporting

Next also handles serving of static files. No need of extra libraries.

CSS in JS

Writing CSS in JS comes in built in next, there is no need to install other
packages such as emotion, JSS and such.

Fully customisable

It handles most parts automatically such as the SSR functionality but next still allows customization over Babel, webpack, routing and next-plugins.

Progressive Web Apps

Creating a PWA is way too easy with next...Stat tuned as we will look into
next features

Ready for production

Next is super fast and it's optimised for smaller build size making your web
app size realy small and faster.

Zero Setup

Next also handles most of your setup process such as file system, routing, hot code reloading and universal rendering.

Used by most known companies

Among the reasons why Stackshare is successful is
because developers like to know which stacks companies like Netflix use
to scale their application, so that we learn them, put them on our resumes and
maybe make a score on the interview.

Handles static and dynamic sites

Next handles static and dynamic sites seamlessly no need to add extra
configarations.

Smaller learning curve

You will still write React, you will not experience the Angular 1 and Angular
4 effect. Next handles somethings that will save you a lot of time such as routing but I will get more into details on the next article, Stay tuned

Disadvantages of Next

How is this framework so perfect? Well its not, it has its own flaws such as:

Redux

Implementing Redux might be a hustle, especially during setup.

Handles way too much

Next handles a lot of functionality that you might take for granted, if you do you might ignore looking into them while.

Note: If you are looking into using next, use react-scripts for a while until you have grasped important concepts especially routing

So far those are the disadvantages I know, if you happen to know or face a couple more, please share so that I add them to this post. You can do so via comments or a twitter mention.

Summary

TL;DR;

In this post we were able to:

Look into why I started to look into next

Advantages of next

Disadvantages of next

Next

On the next part of the Next meets React series we will work on a simple web app to grasp each and every next features.

Disclaimer

Note(no bad blood): Why you should choose next is just my opinion, I have no problem with you handling SSR on your own nor do I have trouble with devs using react-scripts.

Feedback

Providing feedback about this article will be highly appreciated. Reach out on twitter wachira_dev or on this platform through chat.

Stay Tuned 😁

Comments (4)

Just looking through Hashnode I came across this post and gave it a read. React sure is handy, but one of the reasons I am/was sceptical about it was that I was required to handle all of the above manually. I'm definitely going to try next. I do have a question for you though; What do you think of Stencil Js? I've been using it for a while now and I have to say it handles almost all of the above mentioned. I often find that I have to do very little to set up the above. Want a web component or a whole library of them? Use stenciljs. A whole app built with web-components only? Try stenciljs. Or even add @ionic/core for a mobile personalized look. @ionic/core is itself just a collection of web components built using stencil.